Saturday, March 15, 2014

Transcripts
below based in the direct sending, synthesized in twits by @wikileaks
(and @treisoroon, @avilarenata, @professorsblogg)

This was said by Julian Assange:

I

(@wikileaks)

At any one point in the United States there’s some 60,000 prisoners in some sort of solitary confinement.

The NSA and GCHQ have been sucking up all our personal communication, and their capabilities have been doubling every 18 months.

The ability to surveil everyone on the planet is almost there, and
will arguably be there in a few years. And to store that data.

Historically the NSA has run its PR campaign based on not existing.
When a lot of info came out, NSA gave an aggressive response.

Totalitarian dystopia in the sense that the surveillance is total, so that no one can exist outside the state….

The Internet about 4 years ago was a politically apathetic space.
There were gradually developments, e.g. Anonymous vs Scientology.

Harrison (UK), Poitras (US), Appelbaum (US) are now all in effective
exile in Berlin. NatSec reporters are a new type of refugee.

[Answering a question about how he started] We saw that cryptography
would liberate people in a very important way. It would help those
trying to hold the state accountable.

It became clear to me that one of the best ways to achieve justice is to expose injustice.

When we published the manuals from GITMO, there in those manuals in black in white is ‘hide things from the Red Cross’.

Just this week, Gen. Alexander making comments at GW University that
soon there’d be a media leaks bill to try & stop publication.

Now that the Internet has merged with human society, the laws that apply to the internet apply to human society

We know what happens when a government gets serious: someone gets fired, prosecuted, etc. These have not happened to the NSA.

The reform doesn’t appear like it’s going to come out of the govt.
Indicatitive of the deep state, the power of the intelligence agencies.

You’ve got no choice. You can no longer hide from the state or keep your head down. Arbitrary justice is arbitrary.

We are now all involved in it. We are all part of the state. We have no choice but to attempt to manage it.

We are educating each other at an unprecedented speed. 20 year olds today are much more educated than 20 year olds 10 years ago.

Yes, we have upcoming leaks, but we don’t like to give the opponent too much of a heads up.
The Crimea region is so geopolitically important to Russia that they’re willing to pour immense resources into retaining it.

Unless you’re involved in the system of coercive force, with money alone you don’t get power.
The big lessons are not geo-strategic lessons. We were ready for that
fight. It’s more how people you trust behave under pressure.

The big lessons are not geostrategic lessons. We were ready for that
fight. It’s more how people you trust behave under pressure.

We’re all living in a world that we don’t actually understand. Before all these disclosures, we were living in some illusion.

We are walking around constantly in this fog where we can’t see the ground. These disclosures are a break in the fog.

In some ways I feel the fear more keenly, so I can perceive the way things are going in different ways.

Courage is not the absence of fear; only a fool has no fear. Courage is seeing the fear and continuing to proceed.

Power is a thing of perception. They don’t need to be able to kill you. They just need you to think they are able to kill you.

The Pentagon in 2010 demanded we destroy all previous and upcoming publications. And we said ‘no’.

We’re a small publisher. We try and test. We do not accept the perception of fear, we push to see what is the reality.

II

(@tresiroon)

Google & other big companies are in the business of collecting as much info as possible. You are the product.

Q. What would you tell kids about sharing their personal info online?
Assange “It’s part of your permanent record… quite unpredictable”

III

(@professorsblogg)

Swedish govt is having a lot of intervention in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ betrayed the people”.

IV

(@avilarenata)

“Militarization of our civilian space”, that is how Assange describes the invasion of NSA.

On the extreme anti-Russian provocations of Sweden’s Foreign Minister

And, why
the name of the Svoboda Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok has been
‘Photoshop’-bleached in the picture twitted by Carl Bildt?

By Marcello Ferrada de Noli

I am certain that many remember, at least
in Sweden, the TV scenes showing Carld Bildt participating in the
protracted Kiev demonstration. Although many demonstrators apparently
professed discontent towards the government on the issue
“EU-membership”, those were not spontaneous demonstrations. Not at all.
Those were at heart and by design anti-Russian demonstrations
orchestrated by a constellation of neo-Nazi and so-called “nationalist”
organizations supported a) by the US Embassy, and b) by a group of
hard-liners at the top of the EU, mainly represented by Carl Bildt.

For instance, in a telephone talk between
the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US
Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, it emerges that the appointment of
Arseniy Yatsenyuk as leader of the country after the coup, it was a
puppet installation by the US envoys (See the video here).

Later, however, the “diplomatic
behaviour” that Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt exhibited in
support to the new leadership in Ukraine went really out-of-order. At
least judging from what has been widely referred in the Swedish press.

This criticism has flourished in a variety of main newspapers. For
instance, even the right-wing conservative SvD had the headline “Bildt’s Quisling-tweet astonishes“; and in the Aftonbladet piece “Monstrous hypocrisy on Ukraine“, prominent columnist Åsa Linderborg writes about the comparison of Putin with Hitler:

“It is an insult to millions of
victims [caused] by the Third-Reich, many of whom died precisely in
Ukraine, in massacres that Svoboda celebrates as its historical
heritage.”

And it is a fair criticism. Even for
Bildt’s own standards (in my humble opinion, a “diplomatic behaviour”
that has been more devoted to represent NATO’s interests, or the
interests of global-finance such as those nucleated around the Bilderberg-Group and
the like, than on behalf of Sweden) his extreme-biased utterances have
been unique; and they pictured him rather as a simple fanatic right-wing
extremist.

That cannot represent what the Swedish
people think at large. Even the conservative Prime Minster Fredrik
Reindfeldt has produced declarations on the Russia/Ukraine crisis that
contradicts or “soft down” the utterances of his own foreign minister.
Unfortunately, what is heard in the world as Sweden’s official voice, is
only Bildt’s voice.

Now Bildt has proudly twitted on his
meetings in support of the new Ukraine leadership. He even twitted a
picture. And there are a few markedly facts about this picture, worth an
analysis.

I have made a close up of the picture:

In the picture the names of Prime
Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and others ar fairly readable. But, why is
the name of the Svoboda Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok washed-out in the
picture twitted by Carl Bildt? Who is trying to avoid that his
counterpart in the Ukrainian government could be recognized? For
obviously he could just erase him from the picture; for if the picture
aimed to give prove of his meeting with Ukrainian leaders, they would
disappear by erasing …

An injury-epidemiology & human-rights report

by Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli

After one of the 381 US-drone strikes in Pakistan

While conducting the supervision of a Master Thesis in the subject injury epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet, [1]
I came to the reflexion that the actual number of fatalities in
war-related events such as combats or air strikes, might be
significantly higher than those reported in the “body counting” sites,
also used as sources by the media.

Concretely, I realized that the figures
did not include injured individuals that died after been transported as
wounded to other localities, such as hospitals or camps. The demise
occurring after, even long afterwards, and as consequence of injures
received in the combats or air strikes. In other words, media reports on
“war casualties”– in the context of the given combat or air-strike
event which is the subject in the report – invariably refer as
fatalities only to those who perished in situ and at that very occasion.

The findings, which I reported at international Injury Research conferences in Vienna, [2] and Prag 2004, referred the following epidemiological problematic leading to an underestimation in the assessing of casualties:

A particular epidemiological confounding may occur when the
variables of the study are ill-defined or the conceptual extension of
the entities under study is used in a too broad meaning.

One example is if we assign to “casualties” both fatalities and
injured victims and in the third part analysis the toll is read as only
fatalities ipso facto at the time of the referred armed clash or combat.

Now, if the above estimating-problem is
huge referred to regular military personnel reported as fatalities, it
is just logical to conclude that such bias is higher prevalent when
referred to civilian populations victims of drone-strikes. This, partly
because of the areas targeted commonly correspond a) to countries with
poorer hospital facilities or epidemiological administrative services,
b) to areas populated mostly by poor people, that due to SEC-factors
would have lesser possibilities to have their peers’ fatalities (long
time after the injury-event) reported.

I argue that a similar situation occurs
with the multiple reports in the international Human Rights community
trying to assess the impact of drone-strikes amidst the civilian
population. The reports refer partly to civil casualties derives from
drone-attacks, and partly to the physical collateral damage in the
humble infrastructures and habitat of the victims.

On the other hand, the wider the number
of reports, the more imprecise is growing the epidemiological estimate
of drone-related fatalities or drone-related injuries at all. Also,
important media outlets and blog reports have focused on this issue.

Counting of confirmed civil casualties caused by US drone strikes

1. The figures I present here correspond to confirmed cases of
fatalities. Hence, they do not include a further estimation referred to

a) victims that died long time afterwards, as a sequelae of injuries received at the strike.

b) victims as the result of fatal events reported as “likely caused by drone-strike”

c) fatalities reported as drone-strike related but that correspond to other so-called cover operations

2. I present these figures as a “meta-estimate”, meaning that it
corresponds to calculations I made based in the public sources available
(See source down below).

Introduction – 1. The Intercept exposures
and Swedish collaboration with the US – 2. The revealing silence on
The Intercept revelations from the part of the Swedish authorities and
media – 3. The extent of a geopolitical servitude.

Introduction

“A vain Emperor
who cares for nothing but his appearance hires two tailors who promise
him the finest suit of clothes from ‘a fabric invisible to anyone who is
unfit for his position’. The Emperor cannot see the cloth himself, but
pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position; his
ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is
finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor then marches in
procession before his subjects, who play along with the pretense.
Suddenly, a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability
of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing
nothing at all”[2]

After nearly four years of the message in Professors blogg
on the case Assange, my 250 analyses and articles, one book, and nearly
1,000 comments, I have to admit that the international debate on the
Swedish case against Assange is still futilely devoted to “the legal
aspects” of the case. The discussion has been made up from the beginning
around “technical” arguments, and where court verdicts or utterances of
legal folks have been paramount attraction. As an illustration, the
Swedish online forum Flashback, mainly dealing around such legal
aspects, has produced up to now nearly sixty thousand comments (N= 59
257) that have been viewed nearly six million times (N= 5 723 806). And
from the part of the Swedish press, the only opinion articles accepted
for publication on WikiLeaks or its founder Julian Assange are those
bound to contribute to the “legal discussion”, hence, towards the ever
blowing smoke-curtain encouraged to hide the real case.

Likewise, as soon the establishment’s
media monopoly prints a declaration – often repetitions – by lawyers
working for the perpetuation of the “Assange case”, the international
social media is inundated with exegetic comments trying in vain to
elucidate if any novelty might be at sight. Like when the people tried
to describe the Emperors clothes while he walked in front of them, as
blunt naked as his deceiving.

My position is instead: there is not such
a “legal case”; it has never been. Plainly: there is not legal ground
for a prosecution of Assange in Sweden on the base of the alleged
behaviours. Arguments from the part of the Swedish prosecutors in the
form of vague insinuations of “undisclosed” reasons for pursuing the
issue of an interrogation with Assange (at the same time that they
neglect carrying out such interrogation in London) emerges after four
years as a pure and simple bluff. And this bluff shall be certainly
“called” if an interrogation ever is to be performed. Ergo, the case is
postponed indefinitely.

Which in turn is the reason explaining
why the prosecutor has first neglected such interrogation while Assange
was still in Sweden, and the afterwards deferring of the interrogation
by the prosecutor while Assange has remained in London.

Which in turn explains the unreasonable
reiteration of the prosecutor’s bluff done recently by Claes Borgström,
on that the interrogation of Assange should take place in Sweden.[3]
For both the prosecutor and Borgström – and for that part the Swedish
legal establishment as a whole – are certain that, unless the Swedish
government would not issue guaranties about no-rendition of Assange to
the USA, Julian Assange will never risk travelling to Sweden.

After all, as already recorded in
History, the company Bodtsröm & Borgström, in the person of former
Justice minister Thomas Bodström, has allegedly its hands blooded with
the rendition to the CIA of prisoners kept in Swedish territory to be
transported for torture elsewhere. To the best of my knowledge, Claes
Bogström has never publicly taken stance against such deeds, or
commented his own main partner and political peer Thomas Bodström on
that issue.

So, in my opinion, what it is required
about this case’s stalemate is to shift from the time-consuming
developing on the legal technicalities that actually refer to a
non-existing “legal case”. What it is necessary is a creative
international criticism changing focus to the actual political plot and
the denouncing of its main actors. In other words, when nearly four
years has passed, may I ask to realize that the legal garments of
Emperor Sweden have never existed? For in the main, the Swedish
Versus Assange has been from the beginning a case aimed to disrupt the
publishing endeavour of the anti-secret organization WikiLeaks.

It emerges now clearer that the “Assange
prosecution-case” was a request from the US government. And most
interesting, the dialectics of this deception is double fold. On the one
hand explains the diathesis of the case, its origins and bogus
character; on the other hand it explains the impossible situation of the
Swedish prosecution authority. They cannot afford to finish the
interrogation, now under the world scrutiny, because the bluff would be
called of when the public will realize that there has never been a legal
base for initiating such prosecution – after that it was dismissed by
Chief-Prosecutor Eva Finné in 2010.

This being the genuine reason for the
excuse-finding series produced for the protracting of the case; such as
the last publication in SvD by politician Borgström, mentioned above.
The same regarding the bogus European Arresting Warrant issued nominally
by Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny and publicly defended by
Prosecutor-General Anders Perklev; as I explained in a recent analysis,[4] such EAW had as realtarget
not the detention of Assange, but the creation of an extradition
process leading to the subsequent stalemate of the case and the
immobilization of the WikiLeaks founder. It is highly the time we denounce this
in the first place and mobilise in accordance politically. For the
deadlock of a political case can only be broken down by political means.

In these days, new revelations published
by The Intercept (18 February 2014) on US efforts to get Assange
prosecuted by allies elsewhere, confirm to a great extent main theses
that I have put forward on the Assange case 2010 and onwards.

Although the Greenwald & Gallagher
revelations in those regards are not new (for the same information has
been released on at lest two occasions in 2010, see below), this new
actualization has deserved widespread attention. Partly, for the
information it was ascribed to Edward Snowden documents, and partly
because it comes almost simultaneously with the publication by Alexa
O’Brien (17 February 2014) of a thorough and inedited documentation she
obtained, pointing to the US preparations for indicting Assange and
WikiLeaks.[5] In agreement with the author, I newly republished Alexa O’Brien’s documented analysis in Professors blogg.
in In this article I discuss the above-mentioned findings and
actualizations against the backdrop of the Swedish political-prosecution
itinerary.

Finally in this Introduction, I wish to
state that my contention on a paramount political diathesis of the case
is not a “working hypothesis”, or much less a “conspiracy theory” – as
Expressen’s Editor-in-Chief Tomas Matson referred to my standpoints in a
debate with him at Swedish Radio One.[6] I am a Swedish/US educated scientist, not a Swedish journalist; [7]
and I am professor of empirically based medical sciences, not else.
Meaning: my analyses on the Swedish case against Assange are not other
than the review of facts as they have truly happened in the societies
involved. And, beyond opinions, I have never met a rebuttal on the facts I have put forward.

1. The Intercept exposures and the Swedish collaboration with the US Department of Justice

On the 18 of February, based on Edward Snowden documents, Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher revealed in The Intercept [8]
important evidence, in my opinion direct relevant to the Swedish case
against Julian Assange. Summarizing the news with Kevin Gosztolas
headline in The Dissident; [9]

Accurately, the Snowden document referred
by Kevin Gosztolas stated the following (the full document has not been
available, to the best of my knowledge; the excerpt is contained in the
above referred article by Greenwald & Gallagher):

“The United States on 10 August urged
other nations with forces in Afghanistan, including Australia, United
Kingdom and Germany, to consider filing criminal charges against Julian
Assange, founder of the rogue WikiLeaks Internet website and responsible
for the unauthorized publication of over 70,000 classified documents
covering the war in Afghanistan. The documents may have been provided to
WikiLeaks by Army Private First Class Bradley Manning. The appeal
exemplifies the start of an international effort to focus the legal
element of national power upon non-state actor Assange and the human
network that supports WikiLeaks.”

It should be clarified, as also is stated
in The Intercept article, that findings refers to an early publication,
or “scoop”, done by Philip Shenon, former NYT investigative reporter.
He published his report on US urging allies hounding Julian Assange and
WikiLeaks already on the 10 of June 2010, in the Dailybeast.[10]

a)
The first thing striking me was that the communication in which the US
government urged certain countries to initiate a prosecuting against
Assange was directed to “other nations (than the US) with forces in
Afghanistan”. Ergo, this includes Sweden, unmistakably.

This is an item not been highlighted by
the above-cited articles of Greenwald & Gallagher, or Gosztolas, or
by the article reproducing the interviews of Michael Ratner, President
Emeritus of the Centre for Constitutional Rights on the recent exposures
based on the Edward Snowden documents.[11]

In fact, the press secretary of the
Swedish Foreign Office, Anders Jörle, was asked by that time (8
September 2010) whether they have been contacted by the US on the stance
Sweden should be held about WikiLeaks. Most interesting I that the
answer provided by the Foreign Office representative did NOT deny a
contact from the US government’s on any such request to Sweden. He only
said that no contact has been carried out on the issue between USA and
officials the Swedish Foreign ministry “through the official channels”.

The said interview was conducted by Expressen’s journalist Oscar Joulander and published on September 8th, 2010. I quote from the Expressen’s report:

“They have not been in contact with us
through the official channels in Stockholm or at the embassy in
Washington”, says the Foreign Office spokesman Anders Jörle”. [12]

But this is exactly what WikiLeaks
denounced in the Diplomatic Cables on Sweden: that the contacts on
matters of Intelligence operations between the US Government and the
officials at both the Swedish ministries of Justice and of Foreign
Affairs were conducted “in secret”, and even hidden from the Parliament.

In the context, we shall consider that
Sweden represent for the US government the staunchest ally in Europe
(together with he UK) in that kind of operations. Regarding which
countries are “closest allies” in Intelligence operations is not any
longer a guessing. They were exposed initially as the “Five eyes”
countries. However, some moths ago it emerged that Sweden has been in
fact the secretly closest collaborationist European country of the Bush
and Obama government. Sweden has during last times repeatedly been
referred in the international media as to “the Sixth Eye” of the SIGINT
alliance under US command.[13]

b)
The second aspect being that this request to these countries (including
Sweden) was put forward on the 10 of August 2010. It would be enough for
the reader to check the document “Affidavit of Julian Paul Assange” to
realize the timing of the request from the US to Sweden and the timeline
of its implementation.

It is well known that on the 20 of August, only ten days after the above-referred date, [14]
Expressen published the “scoop” that Assange has been “arrested for
rape”. Expressen interviewed Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand, the Swedish
prosecutor that had issued the arresting order, and quotes:

But what is less known, in fact, to the
best of my knowledge never been mentioned before in the debate, is what
journalist Emanuel Karlsten “anticipated” in his article in the same
issue of Expressen on that 20 of August:

“Internet is boiling with rumours that
the US government is exercising pressure on its allies to arrest
Assange. Departing from that, and from this notification (the Swedish
prosecutor arrest order) I assume that it will be extensively conspired
about that CIA finally has managed to infiltrate even the Swedish
authorities.”

Well, who was really conspiring on the 10 of August 2010?

c) The third relevant aspect being that charges were asked to be filed against “the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange”.

That was the case all along, that the
Swedish prosecution (the “accusations”) was initiated under request
because Assange was the founder of WikiLeaks, and for the “damage”
WikiLeaks had infringed to NATO interest and in particular in exposing
the secret agreements between the US government and “neutral” Sweden. In
fact, these were the first words I published on the case Assange back
in in 2010: [16]

“As the detention of Julian Assange is
now implemented on behalf of Sweden, it would be necessary to clarify
some issues for non-Swedish speaking audiences. Possible equivocal terms
based on direct translations of Swedish dispatches may refer not only
to the Swedish case against Assange, but also on the responsibility of
Swedish authorities in the production of the aggravating secret
agreements with American Intelligence services and that were exposed in
the diplomatic documents leaked by Assange’s organization.”

The media strategists of the requested
operation skilfully mastered the item. They managed to revert its
presentation by appealing to a false notion of “all equal under the
law”. Meaning, “just because he is a celebrity he will not be excused”.
Another trick engulfed by the Swedish public, which did not realize
that it was exactly the opposite. It was because Assange is the
WikiLeaks forerunner and indicated as main responsible of the exposures.

Further, no one has cared to
statistically examining the prevalence of such “legal measures” from the
part of the Swedish authorities among a cohort of average Swedes
accused of similar behaviours, cases with about the same degree of
“evidence” or personal-affective motivation behind, as it is purported
being the case “of the two women” accusations against Assange.

But it is also an item I have been
insisting in clarifying all along. That we should not let pass
uncontested that the case against Assange is presented at the media
divorcing “the person Assange” from the fact he is the founder and
forerunner figure of WikiLeaks. This is a mistake also contained in
several interventions from the part of WikiLeaks supporters, who
unfortunately did not realise it was part of the smear-accusation
strategy. That has been the strategy assayed by Swedish journalists and
in general among the Anglo-Saxon media, separate “Assange” from
“Wikileaks”, a mantra still going strong in the social media
particularly Twitter.

All this, but principally the
above-mentioned revelations done by Alexa O’Brien, would bring support
to the hypothesis defended in these columns (the “stalling hypothesis”)
about the protracting of the case from the part of Sweden in order to
allow the completion of the indictment in preparation in the US against
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. In other words, the findings by O’Brien
also indicate the real nature of the Swedish case VS. Assange, as she
clearly demonstrates that US investigation of WikiLeaks is now entering its 5th year.

Why selecting Sweden for the Assange op?

One answer could be found in the content
of the first reports from Fox TV, the Daily Telegraph, etc., back in
2010-2011. Those reports nearly highlighted that Sweden is “neutral”,
and expressly anticipate the argument around these terms, “it is
unconceivable that a neutral country like Sweden, and which remained
neutral during the Second World War, would be doing this on orders of
another country.” In other terms, the image Sweden as a neutral country
would show the “objectivity” of the accusations and the subsequent
State-sponsored arresting warrants and extradition requests. But the
image of a “neutral Sweden” was deceitful, as demonstrated by the facts
exposed in the 2011 article “Sweden, NATO and Assange”,[17] answering to Clarie Harvey’s piece in Daily Telegraph. [18]

2. The revealing silence on The Intercept revelations from the part of the Swedish authorities and media.

After five days of the Intercept scoop,
particularly when the item concerning WikiLeaks and Assange has been
referred in principal international media outlets, not a single word has
been uttered by the Swedish press or broadcasting services, public or
private. This, considering that according to Google, the item referred
by the scoop of Greenwald & Gallagher to Assange and Wikileaks in
conjunction to “prosecution”, has been referred 402 000 times on the Web
so far in these five days.[19]

The scandalous touch is given by SvD. The
paper is running today (23 of February) an extensive article in the
Culture section precisely on the theme of Edward Snowden’s exposures and
in the main context of The Guardian journalist Luke Harding’s book ”The
Snowden files”. The title is even headed “A matchless reportage on
Snowden and the scoop of all times”. [20]
The article even reports expressly the launching of The Intercept,
“completely aimed at exposures based on the Snowden documents”. But
WikiLeaks is only mentioned in the article as an organization once
despised by Snowden; and Greenwald is only portrayed as a bitter
journalist “irritated that Harding has stolen his scoop”. And
about the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a target for international
prosecution as described in that launching of The Intercept? Not a
word.

It is not believable that the Swedish
media would not consider relevant to Sweden, if not highly relevant, the
revelations done by Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher in The
Intercept. I will first explain this relevancy for the Swedish scenario.
Then I will enumerate some central myths cultivated by the Swedish
authorities, the Swedish legal system and their servant media about
Assange and the “legal case”. For in these behaviors is to found the
real reasons why the media is absolutely mute about the last Snowden
revelations. For it exposes the bluff.

3. The extent of a geopolitical servitude

At the very same time the right-wing
conservative SvD published politician Claes Bogström’s new utterances in
support of a prosecutor authority, this time on the Assange case,
Sweden’s Riksdagen (the Congress) was holding its yearly
debate-session on “Swedish” foreign policy. Main actors in this
nationwide-broadcasted parody were Carl Bildt, US government informer
and foreign minister of Sweden, and Urban Ahlin, a right-wing
spokesperson in foreign affairs of the main “opposition” party, the
social democrats, party comrade of Bogström & Bodström and also a
conspicuously visitor of the US Embassy in Stockholm. [21]

To give an idea of the extent of Sweden’s
geopolitical servitude, it will be enough to mention that even the
staunchest pro-US newspaper in the Swedish MSM, right-wing conservative
SvD, run on the 19 of February 2014 an article with the headline:

The article, published the day after of
the afore -mentioned debate, ensued with statistics showing the thematic
distribution of partisan interventions on foreign policy done in the
Parliament during the last decade. But it was not clear difference among
the Swedish parties. This is the country were even the former feminist
Communist Party, which changed the name to “Vänster” (means
“Left”), voted for Carl Bildt’s proposition of sending jetfighters to
Lybia, and most recently, announced its support for the Swedish
participation with troops in the military occupation of Mali.

One important aspect in this
“deformity” consisting in, according to Anna Jardfelt (CEO of the
Swedish Foreign Policy Institute), that Sweden is taking part militarily, with troops, in regions of the world that are not in the political priorities of Sweden.[23]
This military participation of Sweden is said to be implemented in the
frame of EU-cooperation. But the truth is that these operations
basically correspond to NATO design and operative command.

No doubt Sweden has revealed itself been
the closest collaborationist European country of the Bush and Obama
government, and nowadays has repeatedly been referred in the
international media as to “the Sixth Eye” of the SIGINT alliance under
US command.

I found strange that this association
with Sweden, as a country receiving the request from the US government
to pursue a prosecution against Assange, has not been found (it has not
been mentioned or developed) amidst the different interviews or articles
dealing with the report by Greenwald and Gallagher in The Intercept.

[11] ”Documents Reveal NSA and GCHQ Efforts to Destroy Assange and Track Wikileaks Supporters”
Interview transcript by Anton Woronczuk. Truthout, 21 Feb 2011. Michael
Ratner (President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional
and Human Rights in Berlin) says: “And what the substance of it is is it
says that we have to make an effort to get Julian Assange prosecuted
everywhere in the world. And at that point they pointed to four, maybe
five countries–the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, the U.S.,
Iceland. Those are the countries that are going to go after him in. And,
obviously, there are other countries added as they go along.”

“Sweden has sometimes been called the
‘Sixth Eye’ – referring to the English-speaking Five Eyes SIGINT
alliance – suggesting a close working relationship between Sweden’s FRA
and the NSA and GCHQ. New documents suggest that it has access to the
XKeyscore tool, and has helped in the Quantum hacking program.”

[21]
The “shadow foreign-affairs minister” Urban Ahlin has also been
disclosed in the Wikileaks diplomatic cables. Swedish paper Expressen
published at that occasion the article “Wiklieaks discloses: Ahlin wanted to sell the (Afghanistan) war to the Swedish people in this way“.
Namely, Urban Ahlin had asked at a meeting in the US Embassy in
Stockholm, that US should send to Sweden a local politician from
Afghanistan in order to tell the Swedes “affective-impacting” stories.
This would further increase the support from the Swedish people towards
the military occupation, reasoned Ahlin. Urban Ahlin has of course tried
to deny
that such conversations had occurred and dismissed it as “Wikileaks’
lies”. Nothing happens afterwards; he was not further questioned by any
Swedish journalist and he is still Sweden’s “shadow foreign-affairs
minister”.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

I
met Julian Assange personally, in London. The visit had a private
character with no particular agenda. We spend great part of a day in
talks. Shortly thereafter I published my impressions in Newsmill, Sweden.
Here I reproduce the Second Part of that analysis, referred to my
personal appraisal on some Julian Assange’s character features. My
assessment differs radically from Mr. O’Hagan’s.

II

Some myths in Sweden on Julian Assange

The
absolutely main question in this context is this “What Julian Assange
represents”. The answer of this query will be often the ideological
self-portrait of a given medial culture, of the powers behind, or of the
own article’s author.

In
Sweden, in most of the cases, instead of this vital discussion on the
impact of Julian Assange’s organization WikiLeaks, the readers have been
depleted with a negative myth building around his personality and
often-deceiving information on the “legal” case. Here follows a sample:

“Radical feminists” or feminist opportunists?

One of the main myths spread refer to Julian Assange as “enemy of feminism”. The statement cannot be more far from truth. His liberationist
platform clearly comprises the struggle for equal rights as identified
by the international feminist movement. Conspicuous feminists, such as
Naomi Wolf or in Sweden Helene Bergman have expressly given their
support to Julian Assange’s struggle for justice in the context of the
Swedish case against him. Recently, a letter
sent by distinguished intellectuals, professors and culture
personalities in Australia to the Foreign Minister, the Hon Kevin Rudd
MP, included notable feminists of that country.

In
strict ideological sense, left radical-feminists would find in true an
identification of their societal purposes for justice and equality for
all genders in the liberationist message of WikiLeaks as well as the actual
statements of Julian Assange. Radical-feminists should not permit their
spirit been kidnapped by right-wing opportunists, which in the base
defend a political system opposing equality of all kinds.

What
has happened in Sweden is that a limited number of self-proclaimed
“radical feminists”, for the most part right-wingers, have initiated or
participated in campaigns ad-hominem against the WikiLeaks
founder, for instance the “Prataomdet” campaign and a series of articles
in the mainstream media. And that in my opinion is NOT left radical
feminism; it is simply opportunism. In my article "So called Swedish 'radical feminists' declared Julian Assange a symbolic issue"
I show among other the public participation of lawyer and politician
Claes Borgström - the instigator of the prosecution in Sweden against
the WikiLeaks founder - in paying homage to the anti-Assange
"Prataomdet" campaign.

The myth on “Paranoia”

Another
myth is centred in supposedly negative features of the personality of
Julian Assange, as they have been invented by his detractors and
repeated in the tabloid press and even by the Swedish National
Television, as it was the case recently in the program Agenda
of 23 October 2011 which repeated without further qualification Assange
is “much paranoid in his behaviour” and authoritarian towards his
collaborators. [6]

Previously, a notable columnist of Aftonbladet, Johanne Hildebrant, had written on Assange, he is “a paranoid idiot who refuses to come to Sweden to stand trial”. [8]. Parallel, the tabloid Expressen described in detail Julian Assange supposedly “severe compulsive needs. . .” [9]. And the list is long. My research shown among other (See Newsmill article "Medierapporteringen om Assange är osaklig och likriktad")
that the articles with hostile content published in the study period by
the Swedish press exceeded significantly the articles with positive or
objective/neutral content. And that among the articles referring to his
personality features 72 per cent did so by using hostile, aggressive or
detrimental terms.

Needles
to say that no professionals have ever been quoted of having such
assessments, that, astonishingly, are freely reproduced in the Swedish
mainstream media.

When I submitted my Witness statement
to the London Courts, based in the above investigation, I had not met
Julian Assange personally. My first personal encounter with the
WikiLeaks founder occurred only recently, in London December 2011. The
meeting centered around a book project on contemporary political
philosophers, but it prolonged long in the day.

And
I can say that I would be happy to extent my witness statement in order
to strongly contradict the nonsense published about his allegedly
behaviour. For I guess - it is only my belief – that my opinion would
be the closest to what scientific-research psychiatry have been in some
position to assess. And my opinion is that Julian Assange, apart of
demonstrating being intellectually brilliant, is psychologically
speaking among the most normal among the normal political leaders or
cultural personalities, or journalists, I have ever met (and I have met
some deal of weird ones too). Besides, I was also in position of
witnessing for hours the gentle fashion in which Julian Assange
addressed his colleagues and staff, and also the reciprocally respect
and care.

And
regarding the “paranoia” issue, I say, that is definitely purely
smearing. An invented thing attributed to the personality of the
WikiLeaks founder by his political enemies, and repeated by people who
have never met him personally. It is just one among other lies they have
sold about WikiLeaks.

Further, I personally think that the so
much told (by the tabloid media) security arrangements around the
WikiLeaks leader is another exaggerated description. As and old
Resistant combatant I would say that it is unfortunately the opposite,
that their security arrangements seems rather precarious for a person
whose execution has been suggested by some prominent US politicians (and
that is not a myth). In fact, I personally could not see or
experience any difference in those regards between Assange’s
meeting-arrangements and those of any other cultural personality living
in the open. In other words, the notion of Assange as a “scare” or
"paranoid" personality seeing “enemies” all around is absolutely a
falsehood. I put entirely my Swedish academic-doctoral qualifications in
the field (Psychiatry, from the Karolinska Institutet) at the stake, as
base for my asseverations.

The myth of “fearing to stand interrogation”

In
conclusion, the smearing based on the “paranoia” issue fits too well
with the next myth, on Julian Assange’s “fear” of coming to Sweden “to
stand trial”. I have strong reasons to believe that this might have been
created as a deceiving “smoke curtain” with the purpose of play down
the real risk of an eventually extradition
from Sweden to the US. By repeating over again in the media the mantra
of his supposedly “exaggerated” and “unfounded” fear of merely being
interrogated by some prosecutor just “because” he would be “paranoid”,
the real peril of an extradition to US it makes sounding as unreal. In
fact it is very real: according to figures by the Swedish Ministry of
Justice, regarding the open extradition requests from the USA since
2000, Sweden has granted such extradition in the total of cases in which
the prisoner was in Swedish territory.

III

Epilogue. Pandora, the first ever known honey trap

When
the Olympus gods faced the fact that whistleblower Prometheus had
stolen the secret fire, Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create a woman
empowered with a box containing plagues, and that she should be sent to
Prometheus as punishment. She was given the name Pandora. She was
deliberately conceived as a resourceful nasty woman and with mission
that in the appropriate moment opening the famous Pandora box - which so
many plagues caused to the radical Prometheus. All this as told by
Hesiod in Theogony about ten centuries ago. Pandora’s programmed action against Prometheus was the first ever honey trap known to humankind.

After
I met Julian Assange in London, recently in December 2011, I twittered
that, meeting him personally reminded me vividly my encounter with
Commander Che Guevara in February 1964. This comparison was
instantaneously, and highly, shared by numerous re-tweets, which
indicates the widespread notion outside Sweden of the historical impact of the activities deployed by the organization founded by Assange.

For
it, I will finish with these remarks of Che Guevara, which I first
reproduced in my inaugural lecture “El Sepulcro de Don Quijote” [10]
when I became professor for the first time back in 1970. Guevara’s words
bear a remarkably reference to the role of the new Cyber technique used
by both WikiLeaks and the Cyber-connected democratic fighters all along
the world:

"...You, remember that behind every technique there is a society that hold it with their hands, and either you fight for that society, or you fight against it"

Notes and References

[1]
Christopher L. Blaskesley, The Practice of Extradition from Antiquity
to Modern France and the United States: A Brief History. Boston College
International and Comparative Law Review, Vol 4, Issue I, Article 3.
("Conclusions I" in page 56)

[2]
Analyses on media campaigns or psychological-war exercise are also
highly in the domain of social psychiatry, which was my original
research subject at the Karolinska Institute. Secondly, scientific
(empirical) epidemiology is also fundamental for the study of the distribution
of given myths in a population, such as attending to risk factors,
issues of vulnerability, culture and others. “Qualitative” studies - in
which media and so-called gender (pseudo radical feminist) research is
based - are not scientific and their conclusions not reliable. The
popularity of these bogus academic procedures in official Sweden is
grounded in yet another myth.

[6]
To give an illustration, the Swedish Pirate Party (PP), in spite of
being the first and at a time with a great influence in Europe, refused
to integrate the International PP organization based in that their
economic contribution to such organization, as stipulated it should be
“proportional” to the number of party-members, would have “impoverished”
the Swedish PP’s resources (explanation was given to me by the Swedish
PP office (kansliet) in January 2011. It was an answer to a
direct consultation on why the Swedish PP does not participate in the
international coordinated activities in solidarity with Assange and
WikiLeaks organized elsewhere in the world by the Pirate parties.

[7] Swedish National Television, Program "Agenda" 23 October 2011. The quote-exerpct in Swedish was “väldigt paranoid I sitt uppträdande”

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